1. Copyright
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in the drawings that form a part of this document: Copyright 2005-2012 IMVU Inc., All Rights Reserved.
2. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of computer network applications and networked communications; and more specifically, to the field of hierarchical derived digital product development via a computer network.
3. Related Art
It is well known in the commercial business environment that various levels of commercial transactions are built around the retailer/wholesaler relationship. Retailers are typically those who sell goods or commodities in small quantities directly to consumers. Wholesalers are generally those who sell goods in larger quantities, as for resale by a retailer. A variety of different relationships exist in the marketplace between retailers and wholesalers. For example, in some cases, a wholesaler may sell goods to a retailer, who may repackage the goods in a basically unmodified form and then sell the goods to consumers or end-users. In other cases, the retailer may augment or increase the value of the goods in some way and sell the higher value goods to consumers. In still other cases, a retailer or an intermediate wholesaler may purchase component goods from a group of wholesalers, assemble the component goods into an aggregate system or some higher-value assembled product and then sell the higher-value product/system to another retailer or consumers. In each case, the cost of the component pans of an assembled system as charged by the component wholesaler must be factored in to the price charged to consumers by the retailer. Clearly, the retailer must cover the production costs of the sold goods and factor in a profit margin to sustain the business.
This commercial model has existed for many years in the domain of physical goods. The model relies upon a negotiated agreement between wholesalers and retailers at each level. The time necessary to work out these negotiated agreements is typically not a problem given that it also takes time to transport the physical goods between wholesalers and retailers. However, as the traditional model for the commercialization of physical goods moves into the commercialization of digital goods in a network environment, the efficiency of the traditional model breaks down or fails to take advantage of the speed with which digital goods can be moved around the international networked marketplace. In the commercial marketplace of digital goods of today, wholesalers and retailers of digital goods still operate in the traditional model of physical goods. That is, wholesalers, intermediate wholesalers, and retailers still collaborate off-line to create digital goods, which are then offered for sale and/or download via the network. Unfortunately, there is currently no system or method by which wholesalers can deploy digital goods to other wholesalers or retailers directly and still generate revenue streams when their digital products are used as component parts of a higher-value digital product.
Thus, a computer-implemented hierarchical revenue model to manage revenue allocations among derived product developers in a networked system is needed.